Sunday Noon At Lake Liepaja

Ground and water

are frozen.

Winter is here

I suppose.

Waiting for snow.

Swans

that stayed here

are circling

to find

an open

spot

of water.

May they succeed.

Lake Liepaja
Just a couple hundred meters from our home.

You know I'm always happy to hear from you, right?

Please, feel free to leave a comment here or contact me at ritajc(at)inbox(dot)lv

Beauty All Around

It's getting really beautiful here lately with the colorful foliage and all the late bloomers. As the weather is mostly really nice, I try to enjoy and capture the beauty around me, when ever I see it by daylight.

To see more inspiring creativity jump over to this site

Creative Every Day

And you know I'm always happy to hear from you, right?

Please, feel free to leave a comment here or contact me at ritajc(at)inbox(dot)lv

My Creative Space

Another pretty productive week in my studio and even more so outside of it. I had almost no translation projects to work at (makes me a bit nervous about paying the bills, but I really appreciate the time & energy I can spend with my creative explorations) and no classes at school. 

First of all, we got a new assignment in the CAPI course with Milliande. It was quite a challenge for me, as I'm used to work intuitively and not to know, what I'm actually creating until the last part of the process. For this assignment, we had to stay with one shape (or a combination of them) discovered on a sheet full of scribbles. And we were encouraged to use techniques not so usual to us. So I played with one figure on repurposed pieces of card board and restricted me to 4 materials: white gesso, black water soluble pencil, burnt umber acrylic paint and graphite pencil. And these are my results so far. And, honestly, I was pretty surprised about the development.

Another collection I have started to create are silhouettes of naked trees around my village. It's all covered and pretty dark here, so the image quality isn't the best, but they are good enough for me as a reference or maybe for some transfers. The unique pattern of each tree has always fascinated me, and this little collection makes me really happy, although to get a good silhouette of one tree is quite a challenge, as none of the trees is standing separately in a plain field here. These are the most expressive ones from the images I have gathered so far.

Another series/collection is emerging from my experiments with what's left in my coffee cup after I've had my coffee.  I really love this process for so many reasons:
* the result is pretty much unpredictable, although, after more than 10 sheets, I have found some regularities & the right tool and refined my technique
* I don't "waste" expensive art supplies to play and explore, actually, I recycle, what I always love to do
* no hazardous fumes, the whole house smells like a coffee shop :)
etc. etc.
After the first layer is dry, the sheets look somewhat like this.

This one has the layer number 4 on it and isn't completely dry yet.

As you can see, I was all in shades of grey and brown last week. The only excerpt was this dramatic sunrise yesterday morning.

To see more creative spaces visit this site and be inspired

Or join us for A Piece A Week or Creative Every Day

My Creative Space

The past 2 weeks were not easy for me with my daughter's birthday party, urgent translations to work at, and a virus my body is still fighting with. So my muse had to wait, until I had enough time and energy to serve her. That doesn't mean she was happy with that and didn't scream at me, until she got me into arting. So I made some Christmas cards

and continued working at the painting I have showed you 2 times already. It could be finished now, although this isn't the very final stage of it.

For the time being, it's almost impossible for me to show my works online, as my old cheap photo camera fairly died. My wonderful daughter in law sent me hers and I received it today, but it is a professional one, and I don't know, when I will dare to start using it. Besides, the USB cable and the instructions are missing. I hope to find the instructions online and learn at least to shoot pics soon, than I'll need to find and buy the right USB cable to upload the images to the compy. The pics you see in this post were shot with my daughter's smart phone and not very good, no matter how much I tried to edit them.

Therefore, I'll not even try to show you images of the 7(!) new cards I received from my artist friends, as they would no way do justice to the adorable miniature works of art they truly are. Please, bear with me, until I can depict them properly.

To make the waiting less hard, I can show you a piece of the winter wonderland we are living in right now (shot by my daughter and edited by me).

To see more creative spaces visit this site and be inspired

My Creative Space

Last week, I had some really good time together with Deruta. Hadn't been outside so much for very long time. Tried to shoot pics of her on each place we visited, and had to be very creative with that :)

I have continued working at the cards for the swap and started to knit a triangular lace scarf for my sister as well. Pictures - some other time.

To see more creative spaces jump over to this site and be inspired.

My Creative Space - Knitting

I'm still pretty much in knitting and trying to shoot and edit pictures of my knitted creations.
My sweet teenage daughter Anna was ready to model some of them. But there is almost never the right day light for it lately...
And I'm not used to work with large items, so learning, learning, learning ...
Love it!
To see other creative spaces and to show yours visit Kirsty's and have fun!

Monday Moodboard - Frances

matchstickgirl

enchantedpond

Frances still needs more than $1000 ... 9 days left ... Take a look --->

See more collections with works of European artists here

Monday Moodboard

matchstickgirl

enchantedpond

New Zealand born photographer ,Frances Melhop has just been awarded an artists residency with the MIRA foundation in Puglia Italy. In an effort to rapidly raise funds for her project she's offering a 2 for the price of one on any images of equivalent value from both of her shops on Etsy. Read more about it here

My Creative Space

New supplies arrived a couple of days ago. Now I'm trying to shoot pics to offer them to my customers. As sun is playing hide and seek with me, it's an extremely creative process :)
To see other creative spaces and to share yours visit Kirstys blog

My Creative Space

Today I placed a sheet of tracing paper on my kitchen window to protect my plants and to use the sill as my photo studio on sunny days, too.

To see more creative spaces visit kootoyoo's blog